China is stepping up its push to break the grip of Boeing and Airbus on the aircraft market, as the state-run maker of the country’s first homegrown passenger jet seeks certifications for it to fly beyond the country’s shores.
Comac’s heavily subsidised C919, which made its maiden commercial flight in 2023, is already flown on domestic routes by China’s three big state-owned carriers: Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines.
From this month, China Eastern will fly the C919 between Hong Kong and Shanghai, its first regular commercial route outside China’s mainland.
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Yang Yang, the company’s deputy general manager of marketing and sales, told the Financial Times the company was aiming for the single- aisle plane to be flying in south-east Asia by 2026 and to gain European certification as early as this year.
“We hope to operate more of the jets domestically in China and to thoroughly identify any issues before… bringing them to south-east Asia,” he said.
The C919 is a pivotal project in President Xi Jinping’s drive for China to move up the technology value chain, with the ultimate aim of challenging the western duopoly of Boeing and Airbus.
Boeing’s financial woes and delivery delays, as well as wider supply chain problems in the industry that have left it and Airbus facing engine and component shortages, have weighed on the global aviation sector and offered hope for newcomers.
The world will need 42,430 new aircraft over the next two decades, roughly 80 per cent of which will be single-aisle aircraft, according to an Airbus forecast in 2024. Aviation consultancy IBA predicts that Comac can raise its output of C919s – 16 of which have been delivered to Chinese airlines as of December – from one to 11 a month by 2040, by which time it can deliver almost 2,000 units of the aircraft.
Source: Financial Times
